Culm Banks

An excellent culm bank image from this page. We called them "culm banks" where I grew up, but I like boney piles or gob piles. William W. Lewis, in Black Rock, wrote this:

Now at the lower end of town we used to have culm banks anywhere from seventy to a hundred feet high. We, as young boys in this town, used to go to the colliery and get long pieces of sheet iron. We would curl up the end like a toboggan, put a wire on the back end of it, pull the sheet iron up to the top of the culm bank and then ride down on it.

Yup, only we used cardboard, which was more readily available in my day.

[quotation from Black Rock found on p. 139 of Angus K. Gillespie's Folklorist of the Coal Fields]

Josiah White

Everyone knew that hard coal burned, but it was difficult to ignite (and keep ignited) in a furnace, making its value to industry negligible. Well, that is until Josiah White of Philadelphia discovered how to light it and keep it lit--by allowing a draft of air to rise through the coals, rather than to blow across it (as with a traditional bellows). That was in 1815 or so. White was a visionary industrialist, and quickly saw the potential of his discovery. Oh, the story goes that he was experimenting with anthracite one day, trying to burn it in the furnace at his iron mill. Giving up in disgust, he went home. Later, though, one of his workmen went back to the mill to retrieve his coat, only to find the coal burning away. This accidental discovery was the great breakthrough that helped to fire the industrial revolution and turned northeastern Pennsylvania into "the kingdom of coal."

White's coal fields were in the Lehigh Valley. The whole story is in Kingdom of Coal, in much greater detail. I found out here that White, a Quaker, was a dedicated antislavery man as well. The town of White Haven is named after him. See also this article from American Heritage.